[kenjackson]

I didn't listen to the full podcast, but as someone who has spent much of my work time in the past few years trying to hire -- it seems surprising to hear its not a pipeline problem. I advertised and solicited from as many diverse venues as I could find and still found hardly any qualified applicants. In fairness it wasn't easy to find White or Asian qualified applicants too, but still found disproportionately more.

My biggest fear is that if we try to sweep the pipeline problem under the rug, we're not going to fix it. I do have a potential solution, but I think it's a tough sell...

[adamsmith143]

>I advertised and solicited from as many diverse venues as I could find and still found hardly any qualified applicants.

So if you were e.g. recruiting for SWE roles at an HBCU presumably there are hundreds of CS students there. Are you saying none were qualified? If so isn't that a problem with education/preparation?

[tristor]

> Are you saying none were qualified? If so isn't that a problem with education/preparation?

Yes, in other words... a pipeline problem.

When you have bars set in fields where outcomes are tangible (STEM), you cannot improve the situation by lowering the bar, you must improve the situation by improving the populace so more can get over the bar. This is a lot harder to do, and not possible to do in a way that juices the numbers, so very few people and institutions bother to do it.

[SuoDuanDao]

An EDI advocate I talked to was of the opinion that lowering the bar was the best and only way to include more minorities in tech. When I asked her whether she felt the same about men in nursing, she said that nursing is a critical function and standards can't be lowered.

I'm pretty sure the casual racism and misogyny she displayed are par for the course among genuine believers in the EDI space, most just being better at dancing around it than she was. The idea that 'whatever those people are doing' isn't harmed by lowering the bar is probably a less obvious component of how the ideology perpetuates itself.

[tristor]

Yes, I have encountered this often from DEI folks as well. Thomas Sowell calls this the "soft bigotry of low expectations." It's definitely compounded by lay-people thinking that STEM disciplines are somehow less critical or dangerous than medical functions... not realizing that STEM functions often become medical (or other life-critical) functions. Someone has to design the medical technology, write software for the machines, and design the vaccines, design the medicines, all of these are STEM roles.

[kenjackson]

Exactly.

The solution I hinted at is to actually double-down on standardized testing. I taught test prep to HS'ers in poor schools in California in the past and there are a couple of things I noticed:

1. For kids who cared, I could raise their score dramatically. The College Board disputes this is possible, but I could do this pretty consistently over the course of a year. There were a non-trivial number of kids who didn't care and the results didn't apply to them at all.

2. In the course of my prep I drastically increased learning. And this isn't a direct corollary to (1), and actually somewhat surprised me. The same students I taught saw their course grades go up and felt more confident in school. I think in part because I was a relentless, but effective teacher (if I say so myself).

Oddly, this is going the opposite direction from what people are proposing now and that worries me. People underestimate how well some of these students can do. It's like when they used to say Blacks didn't have the intellect to play QB. We didn't dumb down the position. But because of how important the role is, and how meritocratic sports is, Black kids figured it out. Give them a chance to figure this out, with some of the right incentives. (Side note, I do think the College Board also makes this harder and there is at least some anecdotal data that they have biased the test against underrepresented minorities -- but even with all that, I'm still optimistic).

Regarding my original comment -- it wasn't an entry level SWE role. I'd be open to hiring someone out of college, but you rarely find ones with the level of embedded systems background we needed.

[adamsmith143]

I think you're mixing up how people understand pipeline in this case. Generally the thinking is there aren't enough minorities, women, etc. going into STEM in the first place not that there are plenty but none meet the standards necessary to get a job.